Selecting the Right CRM Software for Your Growing Business

Posted on May 7, 2011 by Lauren No Comments

Pardon the cliché, but content is king. Thought leaders and analysts continue to stress the importance of creating good content. It’s important for attracting new customers, helping existing customers, and more recently, improving your presence in search engines (read: Google Panda update).

After you put in the leg work and create a ton of great content for your site, what’s next? Simply putting good content on your site and in marketing emails isn’t enough. You have to track how that content is performing. Luckily, there’s an app for that.

Actually, there are many apps that are all wrapped up into customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation systems, making it easy to effectively manage content marketing efforts. However, the system options are seemingly endless, particularly for SMBs. How do you go about choosing a system? This article will break down the best way to approach this somewhat daunting task, from researching and selecting the software to actually getting started with it.

Start With Research

Before you start looking, you have to know what you are looking for. It is important that you get wise on what type of software you want.

Browse the web
Read industry blogs
Download whitepapers

You don’t need to become an expert, but it’s important to have some context when you move on to the next step of evaluating products.

One important thing to research is deployment methods. Are the majority of products web-based, or is there a good mix of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and on-premise options? And, which is best for you? It is also good to get an idea of cost. For SMBs, a system can range anywhere from free (ZohoCRM’s basic offering) to upwards of $125/month/user.

Move on to Selection

Now that you know a little more about the software and the different features it offers, you should prioritize your requirements. What are your “need-to-haves” and “nice-to-haves?” With this in mind, you will be able to narrow your options.

Start with a long list of all the vendors in the space. Immediately toss out any that don’t serve your high-level business needs. Continue the paring down process by eliminating any vendors that don’t fit your budget. Finally, you can get rid of any that don’t have your nice-to-haves. But, if they have made it past the first two rounds of cutting, it might be worth it to keep them in the running and at least start a dialog.

Once you have created the shortlist, you can begin sales discussions with those vendors. It is important that you communicate your project clearly to the vendors. You should let them know not only what to expect from you, but more importantly, what you expect from them.

At this point in the process, you should request live demos of the software so that you can get a better idea of what to expect. After the demonstrations, you can score and rank the systems based on what you saw. Those with the lowest scores should be thrown out.

Pricing

With the top vendors selected, you will move on to the price quote stage. Be sure that the quote is detailed and all-inclusive (implementation, customization, training, software licenses, support packages, etc.). If you are having trouble deciding, this can often be the tie-breaker, elevating one product above the others. Then, it’s time to purchase.

Getting Started

One of the primary reasons that software implementations fail is lack of adoption. In order to realize the value of the software, you have to get users to “buy-in” to the system. Typically, companies that complain that their CRM, SFA or marketing automation system doesn’t work are suffering from user apathy toward the system.

CRM Training

Once you have the buy-in from the team, you need to start training your employees on the system. You probably discussed training when negotiating the TLA, and now it is time to get started. People can’t use the system if they don’t know how. Depending on the terms of your TLA, the vendor will likely assist with training.

A good approach to take with training and implementation is generally to start small and grow accordingly. CRM systems often have extensive functionality that can be overwhelming to implement all at once. Start your team off with learning just the basics – contact management, lead management, email campaigns, etc. Once you have mastered those, move on to the more sophisticated tools in the system.

If you decide to go with a marketing automation system to manage your online marketing efforts, check out this post from Mac McConnell: You’ve Got Marketing Automation. Now What? It is a great resource for learning how to develop a content strategy that will help you get the most out of your system.

As you can see, investing in an enterprise software system like CRM or marketing automation is a very involved process that takes time, money, and commitment from all parties involved. However, the benefits of these systems are evident in the many success stories from customers that have achieved improved levels of efficiency, as well as a greater ROI, among other things. To learn more about the different options available or to get started with your software selection, visit Software Advice.

This has been a guest blog post from Lauren Carlson. Lauren is a CRM analyst for Software Advice, a company that helps buyers find the right software for their business. Lauren writes about various topics related to CRM software, with particular interest in sales force automation, marketing automation, and customer service. She has a background in the music industry, and when she isn’t writing about software, you can find her running at Town Lake and singing at local venues. She is a graduate of the University of Texas with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.